PlayStation 5: the specs and the tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-playstation-5-specs-and-tech-that-deliver-sonys-next-gen-vision <comment><USER3> I'm not a big gamer, but at this point it seems like Microsoft and Sony are just selling the same hardware. There are very minor differences, but I remember when N64 was such a vastly different experience from the PlayStation. Even the original Xbox was differentiated - it had a hard drive and an Intel Pentium III and Nvidia graphics. Now, they're basically identical hardware. Maybe the PS5 will load games a little faster and maybe the Xbox Series X will have a little more power, but there's nothing radically different.

In a lot of ways, it feels like I should be able to buy one and then just buy a license to play games designed for the other system. Why should I buy (basically) the same processor, same RAM, same graphics, etc. twice?

N64 and PS1 could do very different things and the consoles felt very different and led to very different games. With XSX and PS5, I'd rather throw Sony some money so I can play PS5 games on an Xbox Series X (or Microsoft to play XSX games on the PS5) than create a lot of e-waste buying an undifferentiated platform twice.

Am I missing something about the consoles (other than the whole business/market aspect)?

<comment><USER4> Just to inject a bit of history.

The previous eras of consoles had a design complexity that made it hard for developers to get anything done or tap the potential of the hardware. This mostly includes the fifth through seventh generation of video game consoles, so PS1-PS3 era, roughly 1993-2010.

The "radically different" architectures are sure a bit more exciting, but as a developer it's gonna take a few years to really figure out how to use these different architectures to a reasonable semblance of their full potential. The Atari Jaguar had this crazy bus with a 68000 plus two custom CPUs on it, and to unlock the full potential you have to reduce bus contention which means paying attention to what data is local to the SRAM available to each processor. Maybe you need to rearchitect your game to really unlock the potential of the Jaguar. Fast-forward to 2006 and the PlayStation 3 has this fancy new Cell processor where… guess what… you need to pay attention to what data is on the local SRAM for each core and it was a nightmare to figure out how to really use that.

Honestly, I think that console manufacturers were in danger of getting strangled by game developers if they kept up these radical architectures.

Exclusivity, on the other hand, is a key tool in Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo's arsenal. Good luck prying that away from them.

<comment><USER3> I definitely concur that the radically different architectures weren't good for developer productivity. There was a lot of crazy going on.

I guess it just seems like we're now wasting money on duplicate consoles. It feels like it would be better if Sony and Microsoft created a "standard" for manufacturers to build to. Zen 2 3.5GHz with a specified level of Radeon graphics and 16GB of RAM (with a bit more specifics). You could still have exclusives to your platform - Microsoft has DirectX, Xbox Live, and other exclusive software features. Developers would still want access to a platform for their games.

Don't they usually lose money on the actual hardware?

Nintendo is doing a slightly different thing with the Switch, but the PS4/XBONE and PS5/XBX it seems like they're just making people pay twice for the same hardware just because they've locked up some exclusives.

What's the business model there? 1) Lose lots of money selling a console; 2) We'll pay to develop first-party games that we'll sell to fewer people because they're exclusive; 3) We'll pay third-parties to make their games exclusive to our platform (as compensation for the lost sales due to exclusivity); 4) charge huge licensing fees for access to the platform for non-exclusive developers.

It just seems like there are a lot of money-losing (and consumer-happiness- losing) steps to get to #4. That's a lot of loss to society just to get to #4.

I guess the reason why they can charge such high prices for licensing is that developers know that consumers will likely only purchase one system. If people had access to both systems on a single box, then developers could negotiate them against each other. Now, developers can't negotiate them against each other unless they want to lose out on a lot of potential customers.

<comment><USER5> This is basically what the "steam machine" model was. Standardized controller, hardware specifications, OS, available from multiple vendors. It was unfortunately a bit of a flop.

<comment><USER6> Not really, Steam Machines were just a PCs running Linux at a time when Linux was in a far worse state for gaming than they are now (and almost all of Steam Machines produced either had weak Intel-based graphics or AMD GPUs when their drivers were still woefully broken). There was never any standard for hardware or even controller and most machines were overpriced, ugly, huge or all of that.

So of course they flopped.

Steam Machines _should_ have used standardized hardware (even if it was in terms of "levels" like "entry level" or "high end level"), software and peripherals the developers could rely on and Valve _should_ have made sure that the hardware actually fit their respective levels.

But Valve never did that and while they still slowly update SteamOS, they have been long sidetracked by VR so there are low chances for them trying a second time.

<comment><USER7> They'd have been better off defining a standard with something vaguely like a year, or pinned against a console generation as a reference point.

<comment><USER6> That could help some but IMO the most important part would be to have stable drivers and standardized hardware. What sort of hardware that would be and when they'd updated it isn't that important (though i disagree about the year part - updates should be much less frequent than yearly, otherwise it defeats the purpose of having standardized anything as a year is too short of time span).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shorter load times is an attractive argument, but it doesn't matter when the #1 issue with current-gen consoles is how unoptimized most games are. The traditional argument to game consoles was that it was cheaper and allowed developers to make the most out of known hardware configurations.

As things are now, flagship games on the PS4/Xbox One struggle to stay at 30FPS, frequently dropping to 20FPS or less, without the option to reduce graphics quality or resolution PC gamers have. All the while the low power Nintendo Switch is a joy to game on because most games are specifically optimized for it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah it's brutal. Even loading the Playstation Store takes wayyy too long on my original PS4. It's like it's doing an npm install every time I want to spend money...

<comment><USER10> I play Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled with my kids. I have calculated that you can spend only about 3/4 of the time actually playing the game if you don't play the same map every time, 1/4 is necessarily wasted looking at various loading screens. Pretty disappointing for a relatively simple game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The only problem is that PC technology is significantly behind PS5. It'll > take some time for the newer, PCIe 4.0-based drives with the bandwidth > required to match Sony's spec to hit the market.

This is what stands out for me (I know this quote is a bit dramatic but bare with me): for a long time consoles have lagged behind PC technology - in the sense that PC was always the early adopter and spread out before consoles.

I'll dare to say that the last console that achieved this was probably the PS3.

The PS4 was a bit of a turn off for a lot of people spec wise.

So it's good to see they're using these platforms to push the early adoption of new standards.

Also, good for Sony to let standard NVMEs be used, and not some proprietary form factor that adds no value, and has no benefit to the consumer. That's one of the reasons some of their consoles lost traction - proprietary storage media.

<comment><USER12> What? Ps3 and ps4s used 2.5 in form factor drives. They didn't need to be proprietary.

<comment><USER13> I remember swapping my PS3 drive for a faster 1TB laptop drive, such a good upgrade. Likewise for sticking an SSD in a PS4, although I never got around to doing that.

<comment><USER12> When did you do that? If you said you did that in the late 00's I would call you nuts haha!

<comment><USER13> It was pretty late in the lifecycle, probably around ps4 launch time.

I'm one of those weird people that spends more time playing games on consoles from past generations than I do newer stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a layman, so I'd like someone from the community to elaborate on Sony's approach of constant power to the CPU/GPU while the clocks are variable. My interpretation is that the silicon will downclock based on load - if it is only running the UI dashboard, it will slow down appropriately; if running an intensive software title, it will clock up to theoretical max frequency.

<comment><USER15> I'd like to understand what's the benefit of this opposed to running at a fixed clock speed?

My guess is it has something to do with cost savings (cheaper to manufacture silicon that has to perform "better" some of the time as opposed to all of the time).

<comment><USER16> You can't do that with a console. All of them have to hit the min specs.

You can allow one game to use more gpu while reducing cpu and vise versa.

Just imagine a cpu heavy rts vs a graphic intense rpg

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not from the industry, but from the outside, it looks to me as if the actual graphics quality these days is more about the studio art budget than clever tricks with hardware. Further improvement - to my eye - <USER2> diminishing returns.

In this context, converging hardware with multiple compatible frameworks on top looks like a logical choice.

Console differentiation is more about exclusivity contracts these days.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm hyped, the PS5 sounds incredible.

The SSD is twice as fast as the XB SX and the 3D audio chip is huge. The design is fascinating and it includes a ton of propriety tech. Sony's devs will have a field day with this.

Watch how 1st party games blow Microsoft out the box at 10.3 teraflops.

Ppl spouting that 12 teraflops from the SX will steamroll Sony's 10.3 are fools. Teraflops is a vastly overstated term purposely popularized by Microsoft. It isn't the sole determining factor for performance, nor are all teraflops necessarily created equal.

PS5 is going to be the premier console next gen with the best games and….VR

</comment><comment><USER19> Consoles are now branded PCs with DRM lock-in. Makes way more sense to buy a PC.

<comment><USER20> I'd go further and say they're expensive, very cost-inefficient PCs locked with DRM into only playing licensed games.

PC Hardware is cheaper. PC games are also cheaper. And games are seldom console exclusives anymore. When they are, they're not for long.

There's no value to be found in consoles anymore. They exploit the tech ignorance of the riffraff.

<comment><USER21> Why expensive? seems like a Xbox One S is a few hundred bucks 299 I see on the site. The One X seems 100 more.

Could you buy or even build a comparable gaming PC for that much? Not really to up with all the hardware stuff... so curious. Guess you'd need to pick a case, motherboard and then find similar specs if comparing and compatible hardware combination.

Then I thought consoles were some what subsidized since they also get a cut of game sales. Plus targeting the same hardware sounds like a way to be consistent.

<comment><USER20> >Why expensive? seems like a Xbox One S is a few hundred bucks 299 I see on the site. The One X seems 100 more.

Do look up release prices. These consoles are old now.

And keep in mind they're not proper computers: They can only run a selection of programs, which are mostly games. Usefulness-wise, they aren't even comparable.

<comment><USER21> Yeah. I know a new one is out now but still selling the older models... but I kinda like Microsoft's approach. since even the original Xbox One can still run new releases from my understanding. Instead of each new console requiring all new games and OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The CPU in these machines is better than the one in my desktop. Hard to guess what kind of GPU equivalent it will have, but from a cost POV, these new consoles seem too good to be true. It completely changes my assumptions about what sort of graphics the game I am working on can output on consoles (although, the vast majority of pc owners will have weaker hardware; unusual!)

I sold custom gaming pcs very briefly, these components aren't free!

<comment><USER23> I believe Microsoft were selling the current XBox at a loss, and making it up in game and services sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting, did AMD just sold the same RDNA 2 GPU to both Sony and Microsoft ?

<comment><USER25> There are some differences, like different clocks, number of CUs and memory bus, so looks like both were customized to some extent

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Remember that PS2 required a military export license because it could be used as a missile guidance device? I quote: "Parts of the machine resemble a small supercomputer". Isn't that funny as hell from today's point of view? Here is a link to that story: [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-2000-apr-17-fi-20482...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-2000-apr-17-fi-20482-story.html)

<comment><USER27> And a few years later, there were several PS3 supercomputer clusters. The US Air Force built a supercomputer out of PS3 nodes, and it was the 33rd largest in the world!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The bits about hrtf made me smile : this technology is at least 25 years old. That's how every single 3D audio over headphone has been done since the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish they would differentiate on connectivity. Like usb-c ports for video and power delivery, Bluetooth 5.0, WiFi 6, usb-c rechargeable controllers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it x86?

<comment><USER31> Yes. AMD Zen 2

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > PlayStation 5 VS PlayStation 4

The proper comparison would have been against the PS4 Pro

<comment><USER33> The PS4 Pro GPU is literally just exactly 2x of the GCN that shipped in the original PS4 with scan line interleaving enabled to split the load across the two GPU's.

<comment><USER34> ELI5?

<comment><USER35> The screen is cut into slices, one row of pixels at a time, and then dealt between two GPUs like a pack of cards.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fedora opens up to bundling - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/660429/b749a0be5843e95a/ <comment><USER2> This is an unfortunate development. It's tough to fight against the tide of developers that simply don't care or honestly believe it is a good thing, but it's a fight that is worth it for better security and easier maintenance of GNU/Linux systems, which directly benefits users. Thankfully, Debian hasn't given up, nor has GuixSD that I help maintain.

I asked Tom Callaway from Red Hat about it and he said "I'm not a fan, I think its a poor decision, but I also appreciate that I might be in the minority these days." [0]

Hopefully, once enough people have been burned by the apparent convenience of bundling, we'll see the tide change. Maybe after Dockerization has run its course.

[0] [https://twitter.com/spotrh/status/656677002028691456](https://twitter.com/spotrh/status/656677002028691456)

<comment><USER3> I disagree that bundling is a bad thing. Shared libraries are just as bad as a solution as the windows DLL hell. With shared libraries, you have to trust outside developers will not change function signatures or break your dependencies in some way. You have no recourse if this happens, and it does happen all too often.

It seems like an impossible mandate to ask a developer to support updating their code against new signatures and updated libraries for eternity, especially when their project is finished and feature-complete and they've moved onto newer projects. Developers bundle because we can't trust other developers not to break the rules, and are tired of the deathmarch of fixes.

<comment><USER4> The instability of libraries is enabled by the bundling culture of the ecosystem.

System libraries are extremely API and ABI stable, including libc, libz, libpng, xlib, gtk+2, glib2, etc.

npm enables bundled libraries to have their own bundled libraries, and also encourages trivially small "libraries", so the explosion of sub-dependencies is entirely unmanageable and the best you can do is let every lib bundle its own copy of every other lib and try to forget about it all.

But long-lived large linux distros, with useful applications like firefox and gimp, and a large number of common supporting libraries, show that it doesn't have to be that way. You can have just one zlib, you can have just one gtk+2, you can install bugfix and security updates for them.

<comment><USER5> It's funny how you listed e.g. libpng but not libjpeg which breaks the ABI very often.

<comment><USER4> libjpeg is silly, but that's why everyone uses libjpeg-turbo now, which maintains API/ABI compatibility with libjpeg v8

[http://www.libjpeg-turbo.org/About/Jpeg-9](http://www.libjpeg- turbo.org/About/Jpeg-9)

And if it comes to having a library or two with two ABIs/APIs, like gtk2 and gtk3, or libjpeg7 and libjpeg8, that's not a big deal - those two lines have different "sonames", and it's just those two versions to manage globally, rather than a per-app multitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Folks, please read the article. This has nothing to do with Docker.

It's referring to bundling _as part of RPMs_ , i.e. on having application packages bundle some or all of its dependencies along with the application. This is generally frowned upon, and with good reason, but it's being practiced with an increasing frequency.

The Fedora devs have had a lot of problems with this over the years. More recently, libraries like rawspeed have sprouted everywhere -- they are meant to be used _only_ as bundled libraries.

So they either had to change the rule and allow bundling, or to find themselves unable to distribute applications that are otherwise useful to developers, I guess. They "opened up to bundling" in that they introduced a new provision which allows bundling in cases where there's no alternative, but the RPM has to be marked as including bundled dependencies.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for bashing Red Hat's perpetual beta crap distro, but this time they got it right. Really. It's a sensible decision, not some wavefront of Linux innovation bullshit.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _Policies that are out of line with reality are bad policy: the war on drugs does not fix drug abuse, vagrancy laws do not fix poverty, and the war on bundling merely ensures that bundled software goes unreported._

The metaphor doesn't pan out. The third is canonizing a technical error.

<comment><USER7> That's an opinion. There's a whole debate on bundling vs sharing, and neither opinion is canonically correct. That said, it is only a 'technical error' in your view that shared libraries are the only way.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Bundling involves shared libraries. I'm not sure where you came up with this distinction.

<comment><USER7> In this entire post, bundling refers to software that includes a specific version of each library in its own binary, while shared refers to software that uses the system version and requires dependencies to be installed out of band (possibly by the package manager). They are competing ideologies.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Both approaches involve shared libraries, which are simply dynamically linked objects. The article outlines a problem of _distribution_ , not linking strategies. You're using shared libraries in both contexts.

This is a misuse of well-established terminology. To say this is an ideological issue is a balance fallacy, as the package management approach has long been shown superior (by the likes of e.g. Nix and Guix).

<comment><USER7> Both sides have their arguments, as outlined by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425913](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10425913), so it's really not a black and white 'technical error' issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have worked on several large applications where libraries were customized and bundled in. We would have been better off in the long term implementing the small delta we needed from the library in our application. In every case I saw, it was just an example of lazy engineering that led us to bundling.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why Docker, why not RPMs they are not that hard to build. They have years design an work behind them. I hate bloat. 20 years ago I could get the same work done today in 1000th the memory and disk space.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've used (servers and laptops and desktops) Fedora and Ubuntu for many years. Since the advent of package management, Fedora has been significantly more "just works" when it comes to anything slightly professional or complicated (of course Ubuntu has had the edge on personal multimedia), and I'll bet this practice of discouraging bundling is a huge part of that. On the other hand, Fedora usage is falling, proportionally, right? I'm not sure, but it seems like it. Anyway: tough call.

<comment><USER11> Fedora usage is falling probably because many previous fedora users are a bit jaded with RedHat, the way systemd has been shimmed into everything- there's no benefit to using fedora over Arch linux anymore, you get more control and you don't have to fight the system to get anything technical done.

Or, they went to the UNICEs, which is what I did.

(this is anecdotal, I only know a dozen or so fedora users and they all jumped ship recently because they felt the offering is sub-par now)

<comment><USER12> _Fedora usage is falling probably because many previous fedora users are a bit jaded with RedHat, the way systemd has been shimmed into everything_

Or you could appreciate that Red Hat funds so many great projects and cares about the future of Linux.

 _there 's no benefit to using fedora over Arch linux anymore_

Fedora Workstation is easy to install and has a usable default desktop. No need to tinker with the OS, you can be productive very quickly. Last time I checked, Arch didn't even have an installer.

<comment><USER11> what use is an installer when your OS never breaks?

the only reason I'm so familiar with anaconda is that my system would break in random weird and inexplicable ways on occasion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I left all things RPM in 2003. All developments since have not proven that decision to be in error.

With the promotion of NetworkManager, PulseAudio, systemd, and now these bundling practices, we shouldn't even be calling this a GNU distribution anymore. it's Redhat's Job-security-by-obscurity stack that happens to be running on a linux kernel. And all distributions that adhere to this new standard base (arch, debian, etc) should be considered to that same definition.

<comment><USER14> After your restriction there are not many distros left. Slackware user?

<comment><USER13> Gentoo user, but Slackware is definitely an option still. Linux Mint Debian Edition still doesn't use systemd. nor does Morpheus Linux.

But yes, there aren't very many GNU/Linux distros left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think this makes it exceptionally hard for a distro with languages like golang, where vendoring libraries is _the_ norm vs the exception.

There were some serious issues with this on the golang-nuts fedora ML some time ago where lsm5 was lamenting about the issues Fedora faces when upstream simply won't remove vendored libs.

<comment><USER2> Go in many ways is a bold step backwards in software engineering.

<comment><USER16> Why ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems to fix the wrong problem to me.

The major issue, as best i can tell, is that most package managers can't handle having multiple minor versions of the same lib installed side by side. This because they sort on name-version basis.

Heck, even with major versions the separation is usually a hack by putting the major version number into the name part of the package id (name1-version, name2-version, etc).

Thus you get conflicts when you want to install name-version and name- version+1 at the same time.

This is not a Linux problem though, as on the OS level the libs are separated using the soname system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soname](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soname)</comment>


Why Business Should Oppose Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/why_business_should_oppose_net_neutrality.html

<comment><USER2> The thing is, stratification into entry and premium services already exists. you can get basic cable or ADSL, pay more for a T1, and so on (I'm not going to list all the various service offerings, but there are plenty). But we've still got local monopolies, pricing has not come down all that much, and speeds and service availability have not improved all that much either over the last few years.

I'm very skeptical that auctioning routing priority at the packet level is going to lead to any great improvement. More likely the marginal increase in delivery speed of a few premium services will be cited as the justification for throttling a bunch of others to the point where people are prepared to cough up some more for the service, or customers will just get nickel-and- dimed with a bunch of vaguely specified 'routing fees'.</comment>


Startups Must Stop Blowing Up the AI Hype-Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.techx365.com/author.asp?section_id=648&doc_id=735190& <comment><AUTHOR> Key quote for me: "As an industry, we must be more careful about how we use these terms, and only call something AI when it genuinely is AI. If we continue to apply the term AI to everything, regardless of whether it is true AI, we risk business decision-makers dismissing it as empty hype that cannot solve their actual problems. It will start to look like marketing puffery."</comment>


At BlackRock, Machines Are Rising Over Managers to Pick Stocks - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/business/dealbook/blackrock-actively-managed-funds-computer-models.html <comment><AUTHOR> I originally thought it was a puff piece about machines on Wall st, but it does have some hard numbers:

"As part of the restructuring, _seven of BlackRock's 53 stock pickers are expected to step down from their funds._ Several of the money managers will stay on as advisers. At least 36 employees connected to the funds are leaving the firm."</comment>


Like Airbnb, but for algorithms? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/03/21/like-airbnb-but-for-algorithms/HRx2sUg9fWQMvWZOsQ7xqL/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article_More <comment><USER2> Jesus this is one of the most contrived "Like Airbnb[or Uber], but for XYZ" similes I've seen in awhile...

> _Algorithms are common, but also difficult to create. Aspiring entrepreneurs > can take an eight-week crash course and learn how to program an app, but > writing algorithms is a specialized skill. Algorithms are usually taught in > higher-level computer science classes, and require a strong mathematical > background..._

 _Good_ algorithms can be hard to create, but anyone can create a algorithm, as it's just a recipe of mechanical steps. Anyone can create a "recipe" (of the cooking variety) for that matter.

Looking at Algorithmia's site, it basically looks like an eLance for writing things like scraper scripts, with the additional service of running it on their servers. Could be useful if their servers aren't EC2 and you need to run something that makes requests to a site that has blocked EC2.

<comment><USER3> We run on multiple public clouds. We do have a lot of scraper algorithms (mostly because the community created / wanted them) but also text analysis tools, computer vision , audio and video processing etc. By operationalizing these algorithms/functions/recipes we allow piecing together sacalable services for larger applications . Google has been doing this internally for years .

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to bash, but when you have resources like StackOverflow/StackExchange, Google Groups, and other forums that have most questions and answers for all sorts of software topics, and eLance and oDesk for hiring people to make whatever it is you need, what would make someone want to use Algorithmia?

<comment><USER5> I think there's a sizeable market for tailored code solutions that "volunteers" wouldn't help out with. The bounty model can be more efficient / less cumbersome than Elance for a set of problems.

A lot of people had this comment about Bountify.co; check it out to see what kinds of code bounties people post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good algorithms always end up as open source or as a scientific publication. Therefore I'm not sure if this business model is viable.

<comment><USER7> Even if the core of the algorithm is released, there can still exist better proprietary implementations. Google Pagerank, Random Forests, ROOT/SIFT, etc are examples of 'best in field' algorithms that aren't available for free, public use.

<comment><USER8> Pagerank is just an eigenvector calculation, and for a sparse graph it's linear in |V|+|E|. It's pretty easy to implement, I don't know what kinds of improvements you'd want. There's a ton of random forest implementations out there, what's the closed one that's so much better?

Also rootSIFT is patented so good luck with that.

<comment><USER7> Google has all sorts of stuff built on top of PageRank for their search engine - it's probably safe to say that their implementation is thus 'better' than the released algorithm.

One of the RF creators consults with a company ([http://www.salford- systems.com/products/randomforests](http://www.salford- systems.com/products/randomforests)) on, I suppose, better implementations. Some people have claimed it's better than the R implementation, I don't know.

RootSIFT being patented is kind of my point - the authors created a (good) algorithm and haven't released it for free use. It's within these kinds of niches that Algorithmia can succeed.

<comment><USER8> I think there's some confusion. Pagerank is the leading eigenvector of the graph (G+1x) where G is an input graph and x is a weighting term.

This is not at all the same as modern Google ranking techniques, such as Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has to be one of the worst analogies I've ever seen. This business model is nothing like Airbnb. It's more closely aligned with something like TemplateMonster, eLance, or oDesk.

I see no way you can rent out a algorithm for a business use and lease basis..which is what Airbnb is.

Other then that this I see the reason that something like this exists. Creating accurate mathematical formulas is definitely an art in itself that not just anyone can do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Uh, so is this going to be able to host the massive database used to store the training data/model for some really large deep neural network or latent variable model? Because it seems that's most of what the "algorithms" on this service would be - just some application of machine learning.

No one is going to call this in order to run something like depth first search.

<comment><USER3> We do have a full data api for storing those models if that's what you want to do. We also help you train them , collect the data ,etc.

You can check out our blog at blog.Algorithmia.com for some examples.

<comment><USER11> Your platform is definitely interesting,and there's a lot of value locked in academic algorithms , but isn't the fact that most academics haven't offered algorithms via the cloud(it's not terribly complicated), hint to some other barriers ? And how do you plan to remove those barriers ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really love this approach. I am currently trying to do something similar for academics as part of my PhD project.

We have to understand that programming an algorithm actually is not always "easy". Imagine a new method presented in an academic paper that you would actually like to use. Re-Coding the whole thing that it works exactly the way presented sometimes is not possible (as not all implementation details are explained in the paper).

But imaging having a place (like Algorithmia) where researchers can upload there implementation (without giving access to their source code) and for others to access this algorithm with a very easy to use API would be a huge step forward in academics.

<comment><USER11> Why aren't academics just hosting in the cloud ?

<comment><USER13> Here's an initiative by Jimmy Lin to standardize implementations of IR used in Academia. Reproducibility of results is now made possible: [https://github.com/lintool/IR-Reproducibility](https://github.com/lintool/IR- Reproducibility)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds more like $5 logos for programmers.

The technology behind it sounds really interesting - expecting programmers to chase bounties and work for nothing up-front with only the possibility of getting paid - not so much.

</comment><comment><USER15> An algorithm defines a startup. Don't sell yourself short.

</comment><comment><USER16> Creating accurate efficient algorithms is an art in that not anyone can do. However, the majority of problems the average engineer will run into has already been solved and are accessible with a little searching on google or stack overflow. Sites like this kinda make me sad.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's called a 'SaaS marketplace' or 'API marketplace'

</comment><comment><USER8> These people have come up here before, and I remain incapable of understanding who exactly is (a) going to be interested in using this and (b) is incapable of finding or implementing their own solution.

</comment><comment><USER18> I though Algorithmia launched years ago?

<comment><USER19> It soft-launched in 2014, I believe. I registered on their website asking for an account sometime in 2014, and got an invite in September 2014 to what the email described as a "private beta". The general public launch where anyone can just click and create an account was earlier this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mashape anyone?</comment>


Discontinue bundling NPM in node 5 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/3959 <comment><AUTHOR> NPM included their terms of service into the open source Artistic licence without letting anyone know.

Every download of node 4, the 4 LTS and node 5 is affected and has this version of the license. So it seems you may have accepted the terms even if you only use the client. NPM wrote into terms you accept changes without notice so you don't really know what you have agreed to.

No one knows what this means legally yet. NPM's lawyer made a comment on this but it needs a lawyer that is not NPMs lawyer to provide an opinion.

NPM is also changing its terms and adding more restrictions on users. It also wants a free license to do whatever it needs to with your software. There are concerns from commercial developers including StrongLoop.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can anyone explain the issue here and what the potential implications are? As far as I can tell the npm client code isn't under a problematic license and you don't agree to any terms of service unless you use the service.</comment>


Tricks to get you coding again when you aren't motivated to - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/theghostyced/tricks-to-get-you-coding-again-when-you-aren-t-motivated-to-1bdl <comment><USER2> I use money.</comment>


Convey Project Metadata Using SVG Badges - <AUTHOR> http://shields.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> This looks pretty handy for adding badges to Github and other project repositories. Back in the day, I used to use StillMaintained but it looks like they have closed up shop and moved on. :(</comment>


TechCrunch.com daily uniques down ~60% since sale to AOL. - <AUTHOR> http://trends.google.com/websites?q=techcrunch.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

<comment><USER2> Is this part of a general trend?

YC is down too:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=ycombinator.com&geo=...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=ycombinator.com&geo=all&date=all)</comment>


Don't Have a Mobile Theme Please - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2010/10/wp-touchy/ <comment><USER2> > Instead why not just make sure that your site works on the iPhone[/Android] > in it's [sic] 'normal' state?

This site works quite poorly on my Android phone. There is no left margin and there are some issues with the links from the homepage. Even the title of website is mangled.

I find it hard to take this article too seriously.</comment>


Woz prints $2 bills - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ1TIYxm1vM <comment><USER2> The host does a terrible job. He's not printing the money. Woz is buying uncut sheets of legit $2 from the Mint and then having them perforated and bound. They are legal tender because they were printed by the Government.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it? Because what i understood from the video was that he buys the paper from the Mint and prints $2 on them. I thought it made sense because Woz said "I am not sure if its the right president on the note". Woz even talked about high quality printers which he uses.

<comment><USER3> Nothing Woz says in the interview is false, but he's being very careful in what he says.

He buys uncut sheets from the treasury, pays a printer to make them into pads and so on, and then sells them to random people at a loss just for the fun of playing with their minds :-)

"By law it's legal tender" \- true because they're genuine "I get a printer [...] to make these pads" \- they make them from genuine bills "I'm not sure if it's the right President" \- white lie, it is "The serial numbers look suspicious" \- yeah because they're sequential

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a more detailed account. [http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html](http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DW

He bought sheets of $2 bills from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. Then he perforated these sheets and glued them to pads.

So he didn't really "print" them, but just modified them.

Still funny.

</comment><comment><USER5> He sells a sheet of 4 for $5. I would buy those all day long ;-)</comment>


HP's Big Mistake - <AUTHOR> http://www.xda-developers.com/android/hps-big-mistake/ <comment><USER2> This is a really weak argument: the fact that HP used Android during the manufacturing process for testing is totally unrelated to the argument this same article puts forth earlier that unintentional and negligible distribution is more of a "leak" of private information than an actual intent to distribute a modified work; in essence, the article seems inconsistent in its own arguments and beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think they having made bigger mistakes than this, seems a bit of a non-story really.</comment>


Do you have time for friends? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the high school currently, hacking on a project, studying for few AP subjects and want to learn some additional interesting things too as new programming language every 2/3 months, computer graphics, do sports... Trying to do all of them I end up not meeting with friends, not keeping in touch on social sites. How do you deal with this? <comment><USER2> I usually try to fit everything in during the week and spend time with my friends on the weekends. It's been working out pretty well for me for the last couple of years.</comment>


Ask HN: Early signs that a company is failing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Coming from a startup background:

1\. Senior people leaving (as has been said by pretty much everyone else in this thread).

2\. Not having a clearly defined problem to solve, or a well understood target audience.

3\. Not knowing who the competition are, or just dismissing them as "not being as amazing as us."

4\. Little or no customer research - if you hear the phrase "customers don't know what they want" and it's not immediately followed by "so we need to do research and find out" \- run.

5\. Building solutions that don't really map back to problems. This can manifest in a lot of ways, but the most common ones I've seen: projects constantly changing in priority (entire projects materialise and become urgent overnight), features that are arbitrarily demanded, or in an over-emphasis on polish and minutia.

6\. Departments not collaborating, things getting thrown over the fence. Workflows that move in the wrong direction.

7\. Lack of autonomy - a handful of people make all of the decisions.

8\. Micromanagement. People tend to micromanage when things aren't going well, which tends to make them worse. It's a downward spiral.

9\. Being afraid to talk to management about problems; being chastised for suggesting ways to improve things.

10\. When mistakes are made, focusing on blame rather than resolution and prevention.

<comment><USER3> I'm very familiar with #8. I worked for a company that was being super picky with its term sheets when looking for investment, but then suddenly the credit crunch happened and all our term sheets were withdrawn. Problem was, we were spending as if we'd already had an extra $15m in the bank, so we had to start cutting back.

I'd had a habit of coming in around 10 AM and staying most of the day and part of the late afternoon/evening; typical startup kind of 'go get lunch then come back and crank out some code' behaviour, while most of the rest of the dev team came in between 11 and 1. This includes one of our best developers, who, without downtime, ported an entire product from PHP to Rails on his own time over the weekend because the code was unmanageable and he wanted to be able to iterate faster.

Suddenly, after most of the most senior (and most expensive) people have left, the CEO decides that everyone needs to be in the office at 9 AM, you know, so we can communicate. Sure, okay. So people start coming in at 9 AM. They're tired, they haven't had breakfast, they only got 5 hours of sleep, but boss wants people filling seats so we fill them. I start getting phone calls at 9:03 if my bus is running late, because my buffer time was usually taken up by being in such a rush that I forgot my wallet.

So every day, everyone's tired, everyone's frustrated, and everyone's leaving after they've put their 8 hours in. My start date, when my options were priced, was the highest price the shares had ever traded at. But I was still one of the most well-paid engineers so I stayed until I got 'downsized' and took a month off.

Last I heard, the CEO was getting sued by the board for treating that company as a source of resources for his other company (like flights back to his other company's office, or my tech support to get his people up and running).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm the CEO of a 20-person startup and we've been on the brink of failure twice. Both times, our employees were never aware of it from the symptoms other people might expect (e.g., late payroll, some senior folks leaving); in fact, during such times we paid everyone ON TIME so that we wouldn't be on the hook later if things went to hell.

I would flip the question back to you: (1) Do you trust your CEO? (2) If you DO trust the CEO, then the only time your startup is failing is when the CEO tells you they're close to failure, running out of money.

If you DON'T trust your CEO, then your startup is also failing and #2 doesn't apply.

That's how I would think about it.

I think every startup employee has the right to ask me about runway, cash on hand, etc. I would be open with that info and have shared these metrics in the past with them.

I say this because we (a) hire MBAs, (b) hire less qualified developers for roles that do not require deep technical knowledge, (c) have motivational posters, etc... And as we grow, become profitable, and scale to 50+ people, we require these things simply to survive and thrive.

How could someone mistake that for a startup on the brink of failure is beyond me, but that's what some people seem to be writing in these comments.

<comment><USER5> > (b) hire less qualified developers for roles that do not require deep > technical knowledge

Therefore making them perfectly qualified for the job you are giving them?

<comment><USER6> Which is also one of the ways paul graham according to his faq, suggests one learn to program. Win win.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I find it amazing that people running startups apparently have a problem with this concept. How else are junior developers supposed to gain experience and be exposed to hard technical problems, get the benefit of mentorship, etc?

There is nothing wrong at all with less experienced devs working for a startup. It is one of the components for building a successful company. As your junior employees grow, they move into roles of greater responsibility.

<comment><USER8> I always see startups looking for experienced people as a company started by a couple of non-programmers, desperately seeking someone to make their products for them. It sounds like they'll be worked to death and expected to work long hours while the founder makes fluffy posts on hackernews :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> * Gut feel. This doesn't say much, but sometimes that is a good heuristic. It isn't one thing, but you'll just get a feeling.

* Custemers are not signing up and not paying. The most obvious one. But this can be hard to find. But say if you are used to add features or fix bugs customers find, and then all of the sudden nothing. It could mean product is in good shape, or nobody is using it.

* Senior people leaving. Especially developers whose judgement you trust.

* Drastic changes to the product. "Wait, why are we pivoting?" Corrolary: quite often the pivot fails. It is always in the news if it succeeds. but that is only because it is exceptional.

* No bonuses, and salaries have not been going up. If you somehow find out that nobody's salary went up and nobody got a bonus (this is hard often, companies don't want you to discuss those things).

* Maybe a sharp increase in team-building activities. Taking everyone for lazer tag is cheaper than increasing salaries. But it presents this image of "everything is fine". I have seen that -- a few senior people left. All of the sudden a sudden surge of minigolf, bbq, ski trips and other to mask away the issues. But then again, this can be a sign that the team is doing so well and are being rewarded. I guess this is more of a gut feel and depends on the large context (so it is a secondary sign).

* Owners start avoiding meetings and questions. Because they know they might have to lie. It is up to you, but you can try to ask directly. Then you sort of force their hand. That could backfire. You are now "not a team player" and not a "culture fit" so beware.

<comment><USER10> > Maybe a sharp increase in team-building activities. Taking everyone for > lazer tag is cheaper than increasing salaries.

That can also be a sign that the founders hate each other and are about to split the operation - one of them is treating the employees as children in the hope that they go with a favourite parent's splinter company. They are probably doing it subconsciously.

<comment><USER8> LOL this reminds me of the place I interned at. After my internship ended they seemed to have a huge split. Except the only company event we did was go to see a movie. It was still cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The skilled, senior developers leave.

Money problems (Travel cancelled, Free food/drinks stopped)

Drastically shorter deadlines.

They start hiring programmers who cannot code (Literally cannot fizzbuzz)

Rapid flip-flopping on projects couples with constant firefighting.

Starting to Micromanage developer time in intervals less than 1 day - (exactly 3 hours on X, exactly 2 hours on Y, exactly 3.5 hours on Z)

<comment><USER12> Nailed it. This is exactly what happened at the startup I was working for. I saw the writing on the wall and left, along with 2 other senior developers. Replaced by a set of fast-hire "interns"* that couldn't code. Then management started flip-flopping between a bunch of different projects with severe micromanaging: standups twice a day, constant focus on Jira metrics. Deadlines became very tight under monetization pressure from investors. Ultimately, the grand "2.0" version of the app that was going to save the company never launched, the series B was not raised, and the company fell apart.

*I say "interns" because they were actually full-time hires at 1/4 the price of developers.

<comment><USER9> > Replaced by a set of fast-hire "interns"*

Yes! Saw that happen. Senior people leave, management thinks, no worries, with their salary we can pay for 6 interns. We don't need those traitors / haters anyway. Next thing there are 6 interns there.

Not that interns are bad, they are great, I enjoyed mentoring and getting help from many during the years. It is when they are brought in to replace a senior devs that things might be getting a little weird.

<comment><USER13> One caveat is where I work we found the hiring pool to be an issue.

Senior Devs were usually only by title, and graduate Devs are much more plentiful, we slowly chopped out three seniors and replaced each with competent grad hires.

Turned out to be a much improved situation for everyone.

I can see how replaced ng good senior Devs with inadequate interns would be a bad sign though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots of secret meetings, CEO more stressed and distracted than usual, strangers visiting the office and looking around, hasty writing of documents.

The dead giveaway - salary paid late or not at all.

If your salary is ever paid late then check to see if you are being paid all of your statutory entitlements such as pension plan and government insurances. If the company is not paying these things, go to the CEO and tell no one else except them that you know they are not paying your legal entitlements and you want it paid now. If you have lots of leave accumulated then that is cash value to you and is at risk when the company goes bust. Resign as soon as you can because companies typically need to pay out all your entitlements and unused leave when you resign - and you definitely want to do that before everyone else rushes to do the same, and before the company goes pop leaving you with nothing. Somehow you need to navigate in a non illegal/ non extortionate way letting them know that you'll go quietly if they paid you everything you are owed - careful on this one, you are breaking the law if you say "pay my entitlements or I'll.... " You are of course entitled to explain that you have spoken to your lawyer and accountant to understand exactly what they owe you, and also explain that they have advised you to contact the tax office if you are not being paid what you are meant to be paid, presuming that is the case, which it should be. The CEO won't be enthused about anyone asking the tax office why the company is behind on its payments and this will give incentive to the CEO to pay you fully out. Make sure you and your accountant calculate exactly what you are owed and have it in writing - don't let the CEO/company calculate that because it is likely to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes I think this is the "Does she/he really love me?" question. Because it says a lot about the person asking and about their world view.

I'm pretty sure that every company I've worked in had a success rate that was inverse to the belief that it was failing. That is to say assume that the company is failing, always. That makes two things true, first when you get "bad news" that something hasn't gone right it doesn't suddenly throw you for a loop, after all the company is failing. The second is that you are more carefully looking for things that are helping, and putting energy into them so that you can extend the life of the company just that much more.

You are most at risk when you think you are _not_ failing, then you take your eye off the ball and start coasting a bit. Taking some "me" time as it were. That is when a glitch or misstep will feel like a huge betrayal from "we're doing well" to "we're dooooomed!" And everyone will stop and reassess just when you need them to be taking action and responding.

Often the root of this question is, "Should I stay or should I leave?" After all if you conclude the company is failing you can give yourself "permission" to leave. And since that is the root question, I have found a better way to ask it is, "Is working to make this company a success helping me achieve what I want to in the next 5 years?"

Whether or not the company is failing is irrelevant as input to the question, "Is this the best way to be spending my time?" That question can only be answered by thinking about what you want to do, or be doing, or not be doing, in the future and evaluating if what your are doing right now is getting you closer to or further away from that future.

</comment><comment><USER16> Saving money in new ways, with adverse consequences on work and employees that prove it isn't a benign optimization. Variant: ending or selling off "unnecessary" luxuries. For example, the newest computers are cheaper than old ones, free food is replaced by a vending machine, art on display disappears.

The slightest hint of late payments. For example, salary one day late "because the bank made a mistake": in reality, the company was waiting for cash but negotiations with banks or other lenders were difficult enough to miss the deadline.

<comment><USER4> I'll be writing a longer response in a few minutes. I am the CEO of a 20-person startup and there were a few scenarios we've had where payroll was _truly_ late because of bank issues.

Just want to bring this up so people aren't paranoid when such things happens. They DO happen, especially now that so many startups use "cool" and "hip" startup payroll providers that also make mistakes.

<comment><USER17> I've seen both. The most truly pathetic thing I have seen was the rush to the bank to cash the payroll checks because certain employees knew that the account only had enough to pay a certain number of employees. Have also seen an innocent bank failure that screwed a payroll cycle. Luckily the bank covered overdrafts for the day it hosed everyone[1].

When the company is innocent, its best if the employer shows the employees the cause of the failure and be really, really oversharing so us very angry workers aren't inclined to riot.

1) at this late date, I get the feeling because the town was small enough to call around and make sure people banking at other banks didn't overdraft either instead of covering them money-wise after the fact.

<comment><USER4> Oh boy, that sprint to the bank sounds absolutely devastating. :(

<comment><USER17> When the business office people leave work 15 minutes early, then the rumor spreads and you have a parking lot of people driving like Mad Max to the bank the company uses[1], it does get pretty bad. I was an observer since I worked for someone else.

It was in the 90's and there were "personal adjustments" that occurred later on.

1) cannot drive to your bank because then the check would bounce and really do some extra fun damage - plus this was before direct deposit was available at that company

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some warning signs I have seen:

* conflict between founders

* investors start "suggesting" changes to strategy or stack

* hiring someone external to take over tech team

* instituting some new "system" to improve productivity

* appearance of consultants

<comment><USER7> To your last point: when Bob Slydell appears, it's never a good sign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My guide for a company in decline--and more pointedly for when it's time to leave--is the bullshit/productivity ratio. How much time are you being asked to spend on bullshit that doesn't get product out the door vs. real work on product? If b/p is high, that's a red flag. Now look at the first time derivative of b/p. Is b/p increasing or decreasing with time? If it's increasing, that's a bigger red flag. If it's decreasing, maybe the problems are getting fixed and you should consider sticking around. Finally, if b/p' is positive look at the _second_ derivative. Is b/p accelerating or decelerating? If the former, LEAVE NOW. If the latter, maybe b/p is approaching an asymptotic level you an live with. Or not.

<comment><USER20> Hahahaha, good one :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If every sale remains an exercise in business development and requires the driving force of a founder or similar key person, then the company is closer to failure than success.

While this type of biz dev feels like forward action in the trenches, in reality it means that you are only a few key deals or people from an empty accounts receivable.

Companies that bring process to the prospecting and sales cycle, and develop a path to closing business that is not highly dependent on a small pool of stakeholders have a clear path to growth.

<comment><USER22> Specifics to very early stage start-up following the methods currently labelled as "Lean":

In this case the exercise in BD is relabelled "Customer Development" and the founder is there directly to learn from and build relationships with the early (<100?) customers. The "Way of Lean" says to do these things that "don't scale" to help create a better refined, higher quality product that customers really do want.

By deal #101 some processes should be in place, because now the customer is clearly defined an there is good market fit.

Statistically, every early stage business is closer to failure than success...until they're not.

<comment><USER21> I probably should have added the caveat of speaking about working in an environment that is not purely software.

Here a few dozen clients/deals per year (or less) can keep a company moving and even feeling like it is progressing. Meanwhile the underlying fragility in the sales process is obscured.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is very interesting question and answer is not so simple.

First, if a company is a startup which is not yet profitable and burning investors money you should assume that the company is failing. Yes - you might be wrong (i.e., the company is AirBnB, Dropbox, etc.) not but in 95% of cases the company will eventually fail. In this case, just ask CEO/CFO/your manager about what is runaway, cash on hand, etc.

Second, if a company is already established (out of startup mode) then you can see signs:

\- senior management leave (they have access to more informations than you)

\- rapid flip-flopping on features and priorities (maybe caused by above)

\- TPS reports become a norm

<comment><USER24> > a startup which is not yet profitable and burning investors money you should > assume that the company is failing

If a startup doesn't have a period where it is "not yet profitable and burning investors money", then it didn't need investors in the first place. The whole point of venture capital is to enable the existence of "convex" business models that require a period of revenue-less work before anything happens.

<comment><USER23> Yes.

You have to understand that startups "by default" are failing. They are searching for and developing repeatable and scalable business model.

If they found that "repeatable and scalable business model" they are not startup and they are called established business.

If they do not find "repeatable and scalable business model" they fail.

I was in 3 startups so I would say 100% fail but that is my luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you have any exposure to the business side of things (which in a small[ish] company just about everyone does no matter the role unless the management is proactively hiding these things which then is a pretty clear symptom in and of itself), the impending doom is typically pretty evident.

Things like not being close to breaking even in the foreseable future, investors getting cold feet, having to pivot to appease the VCs etc etc.

On this last point - you really see the true colors of upper management when pivoting kicks in. If there are concrete actions taking place aimed at getting shit done to keep the company afloat - there might be a chance there. If, however, it's just posturing and paper-ware BS to fool the investors into thinking there's a fundamental change of direction - that would be a major sign of things being REALLY bad.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me, the number one sign is the deterioration of HR policies. Beyond late salaries, when they begin doing away with flexible work environment, like variable hours, and try imposing things and micromanaging, effectively treating knowledge workers like shop floor laborers (there isn't anything wrong being a shop floor laborer, I am just providing a reference), it is a sign of what is imminent.

I used to work at a place, a 10 year old established medium sized company, that was hit so hard by recession of 2009 that it disintegrated. The HR thing I mentioned is the period I can trace back to to say when it was the beginning of the end.

</comment><comment><USER27> In some sense, every company is always at risk of failure. Fortunes can turn quickly. Also, every success story has a few tense nail biters on the way. If you are an employee (not a founder,) then keep a rainy day fund on hand, and leave if the work is no longer what you want to do. Also, make sure expense reports and paychecks are paid on time, even for successful companies!

</comment><comment><USER28> When they start hiring MBAs, who then turn everything into a "profit center".

</comment><comment><USER29> Watch out for any change of habits, especially regarding what employees spend on food at lunch time.

</comment><comment><USER30> The rate of industry change is greater than your product development.

<comment><USER31> If you can actually pick up on this, it's a good early warning sign. If you don't already have your two weeks in by the time they take away the coffee maker, you've probably already stayed too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> People stop telling you the "why" of things, and/or you stop believing them.

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom)

* No more free soda or coffee.

* Toilet paper quality suddenly drops.

* Someone comes by to measure your desk and cubicle, but refuses to tell you why.

<comment><USER34> * Rental plants in the office are reclaimed

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cutting costs by turning off the QA servers.

<comment><USER36> If you turn off the QA servers, then production is your QA server. This may be the surest sign in the entire comment section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I will suggest that you fail when you give up and no company is ever completely free of the threat of failing, no matter how long they have been around. If you hit challenges that the C level staff cannot overcome, then you are likely to die. But C level staff are often able to do "the impossible."

It is going to be nigh impossible to determine that something is certain to fail. Paul Graham suggests that startups need to just "not die" to eventually make it. I will suggest that this continues to be true, even after they are worth billions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER38> There was a post on Reddit a few days back that I thought had some great answers:

[https://m.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/4zkka8/what_are_the...](https://m.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/4zkka8/what_are_the_early_symptoms_that_a_startup_is/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Ticky-Tack book keeping around things like vacation and sick leave. Anything that implies a liability on the books.

</comment><comment><USER40> Motivational posters

<comment><USER37> I upvoted you, but I would say Dilbert Calendars and the like are a better indicator.

<comment><USER41> Dilbert calendars are healthily cynical, not elements of denial like non sarcastic motivational posters.

<comment><USER37> I don't think I have ever before heard the expression _healthily cynical._ I have heard of _healthy skepticism,_ but not of _healthy cynicism._

<comment><USER24> Military generals and ops people can have _healthy cynicism_ about the probability of any new technology being bug-free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There is always news. If you don't hear any for a while, it means the news is bad.

That's all I have.

</comment><comment><USER43> No growth and/or no progress on getting traction.

Without this, it's only a matter of time.

</comment><comment><USER44> As someone who has worked at quite a few startups this is the wrong question to ask. Out right failure is pretty easy to detect, and it kind of doesn't matter. A startup failing _fast_ is the second best outcome (after a nice exit) for everyone involved, including the investors.

Startups that fail slowly are the worst, because there is an illusion of success that can drag everyone along for years.

Always keep in mind that the odds will always be astronomically high that you are working for a startup that will fail. You're probably working for a startup that's going to fail. Most startups fail fast (but never employ many people), but the startups that hire the most people fail slowly, so the odds are very high that you are working for a startup that will fail slowly.

So what should your question be then?

It should be: Am I enjoying my job and/or does this job contribute to meeting my career goals? If the answer is no for too many months in a row and you are relatively sure the answer won't change and that you have no power over making it change then it is time to move on, with _one_ highly unlikely exception: Your startup is succeeding and your equity stake is enough that riding the wave of a bad job for a year or two will result in a good chunk of money for you.

So what are the signs of a company that is succeeding? There really easy to spot actually, even though you've never seen them:

1\. Everyone's hair is on fire. Micromanagement is not a thing at your company because everyone is desperate to meet the insane demand and growth that your product has.

2\. The technical work is very enjoyable, because the growth is insane. When you achieve incredible growth it actually stops managers from making decisions that don't scale, because the technical team will have numbers on their side of the argument. Your company can no longer afford to hack things together, because it has to scale _tomorrow_.

3\. Talented people are banging down the door to work for your company.

4\. Founders aren't talking about exits in terms of goals, but in terms of certitude. They've already received offers and they now have strategies in place to get the kind of exit _they_ want.

5\. BS of all forms is not experienced, because no one has time for it, even the people who normally spew it.

6\. Hockey stick growth in either user growth or profit growth is trivial for you to see in your position. The founders don't have to convince anyone that your company is doing well, it's just plainly evident.

If you are not experiencing these signs and you hate your job than it's time to move on. Founders hate to hear this, but if they haven't gotten traction in the first year-and-a-half they probably will never get it. There are notable exceptions, but it's important to remember that you are not the exception (does your founding team seem exceptional to you?).

</comment><comment><USER45> If you know the numbers

[http://paulgraham.com/aord.html](http://paulgraham.com/aord.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> Founders starting to tap into the employee option pool for themselves. Difficult to hire or retain talent after that.

</comment><comment><USER47> Still believing a transformative event is coming after a couple failed prophecies.

</comment><comment><USER48> Firing of social media folks, or at least a downturn in social media activity

</comment><comment><USER49> Is slashing salaries by 50% also a sign?

</comment><comment><USER50> Competitor pivoted and got funding

</comment><comment><USER51> Lack of users and usage.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wrote a blog post describing my personal test for this sort of thing: [http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/05/introducing-lefkowitzs- law...](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/05/introducing-lefkowitzs-law-of- corporate-financial-health/)

<comment><USER37> I had experience with a similar work environment, though I drew a different conclusion:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/business- til...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/business-til-death-do- you-part.html)</comment></comment>


The JavaScript event loop illustrated - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kapantzak/js-illustrated-the-event-loop-4mco <comment><USER2> One thing that's often missing in async / event loops explanations is the underlying OS ( or browser) mechanism to handle i/o. It's often as if there's this black box handling things like « you write to this file, and when it's done, your continuation gets called ».

But « writing to the file » has to happen in a thread of its own somewhere...</comment>


On getting everyone the love they deserve - <AUTHOR> https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/artist-and-educator-mandy-harris-williams-on-getting-everyone-the-love-they-deserve/ <comment><USER2> As a middle-aged, conservative, Christian middle class white guy I can see you're pretty far to the left, but I'm not feeling the animus from you that I usually feel. Good for you -- your focus on love is working.

There is a song by Sinead O'Connor in which as an Irish woman she sings a song of unrequited love to Britain. It is so vulnerable and resonates for me as an Irish American. There is a place for confrontative songs (Stevie Wonder's Living for the City is an example from my generation) but how wonderful would it be for a black singer to sing a song like that to white America? "We have such a rich history together. We are as American as you can get! Ours should be a love story!"

Emotionally and even from the standpoint of cool strategy and tactics, the approach of foisting unending guilt on whites for being who they are is a losing proposition. The critical theory approach just makes no sense. You are right to focus on love -- something that can't be forced, but which people are more willing to give than you think. We just all need to love. And I can tell you from my marriage that I am much more willing to respond to my wife telling me that I have hurt her and let her down than to her telling me how angry she is.</comment>


Spatial ability: A Neglected Talent Domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/940 <comment><USER2> I was just about to post the Slashdot article on this. There is a link in the Slashdot article to a spatial ability test:

      http://psych.io/spatial/

It's a very challenging test and was fun to do. It's for a University project, so I have no idea how legitimate it is. I did pretty well, so I choose to believe it's valid. The Slashdot coverage is here:

        http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/07/20/2244231/spatial-ability-a-predictor-of-creativity-in-science</comment>


Roboto: Android font explained By Glenn Fleishman - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/roboto.html

<comment><USER2> I am bewildered by the amount of character typography experts seem to be able to discern from (what to me are) these plain little serif-less monotone Latin characters that litter our screens. I do notice when things are very wrong, but I'm sort of puzzled by the amount of design and individuality that is expected to be incorporated in such a small space. How much variance is possible under these types of constraints?

<comment><USER3> Intuitively, I think similarly--and then I put two pieces of the same text next to each other, one in Helvetica and one in Roboto, and I immediately sense a subtle difference in personality that I can't put my finger on but I know is there.

<comment><USER4> Roboto has slightly looser strokes and shorter tails than Helvetica, but their letter shapes are _very_ close. Here is a diagram showing Roboto overlaying Helvetica:

[http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs- helv...](http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helvetica)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned anything about CJK glyphs. I still use Droid Sans as my terminal font, both because I like to program in it and that it had really good CJK support. I haven't read anything mentioned about that with Roboto - I hope they didn't end up ignoring that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I appreciate the thoroughness of the analysis, even as my eyeballs started to swim amidst the typographical lingo. The article doesn't so much 'explain' the font, though, as explain the constraints under which the font was designed.

Even in understanding the constraints, I can't help but feel that Roboto is a font that's outsmarted itself. All of this hyper-sensitivity to the finer points of smartphone typography is great, but I think it may be achieving effects so subtle as to just _not be there_ for most of the audience. In the meantime, it punts on actually providing a detectable personality (at least IMO). Helvetica _has_ a personality, and eighty years of baggage and connotation that goes with it. A frankenfont is never going to have that.

<comment><USER7> The subtle thing you shouldn't notice is readability (at multiple resolutions), I think it works well. Android can't use Helvetica anyway for licensing reasons, so they need an open source font; Roboto is Apache licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article, like Roboto, is barely readable. :)

I was wondering why I had so much trouble reading this screen full of text, and it turned out the entire thing is typeset in Roboto. Argh.

Roboto is not (that) interesting. People need to stop going on about it.

<comment><USER9> In Roboto's defense (If there ever was one) it really is not fitted to be displayed on desktop OSes. Of course that kinda goes against Fleishman's argument that it is designed to be versatile across dpi configurations.

<comment><USER10> The article mentions "low 100s of ppi to 300 ppi," which is about the range for smartphone screens these days. Most desktops and notebooks still have displays at around 96 dpi.

<comment><USER9> On a 17" 1920x1200 display Roboto still looks like crap.

It has no desktop anti-alias feature. To me it never looks good, but on desktop especially crappy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few paragraphs in to the article I was wondering what font the article was written in. I figured it might be Roboto and sure enough, a quick trip to Web Inspector shows it is.

I'm not a fan of Roboto personally as each character feels too narrow, squashed, and makes for tiring reading. I frequently check what fonts are in use when it's something unusual. The most beautiful by far that keeps cropping up is Proxima Nova.

</comment><comment><USER9> All these rationalization still can't change Roboto as a whole is not well put together and has severe identity crisis. When your team look disjointed and at odds with each other, really there is no win in technicalities.

Besides, fonts are art with utilities, you can try to repaint Starry night again and again (each time more modern and technically advanced), Van Gogh is not perfect should not be the reason. I find Glenn Fleishman faulting Apple for not having an episode of Not Invented Here Syndrome rather baffling.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where can I download these fonts?

<comment><USER13> Regular: [http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto- Regular-...](http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto-Regular- webfont.ttf)

Italic: [http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto- Italic-w...](http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto-Italic- webfont.ttf)

Bold: [http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto-Bold- web...](http://boingboing.net/features/roboto/roboto/Roboto-Bold-webfont.ttf)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ADTK – new Python library for time series anomaly detection - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arundo/adtk <comment><AUTHOR> My team deals with lots of time series data and in particular we are faced with anomaly detection problems on time series. To help us deal with that more efficiently, we built a toolkit in Python, ADTK, to quickly and easily test out different anomaly detection models and data flows.

ADTK has an API that allows you to easily combine a large number of anomaly detection models ("detectors"), data transformers, and ensembling steps ("aggregators") into serial or parallel data flows ("pipelines" and "pipenets"). It can also be easily extended.

We've just recently released ADTK under an open source license (MPL). We'd love to have people try it out, make contributions, and ask any questions.

ADTK is pip installable and the documentation and examples are linked in the readme on Github.

Most of the credit goes to Tailai Wen, who led this effort.

<comment><USER2> What are some use cases for time series anomaly detection?

<comment><USER3> Real-time alerting and monitor system, for both physical equipment (e.g. [https://www.arundo.com/thejourney/equipment-monitoring- alarm...](https://www.arundo.com/thejourney/equipment-monitoring-alarm- fatigue-ai)) and human behaviors (e.g. [https://eng.uber.com/anomaly- detection/](https://eng.uber.com/anomaly-detection/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is a blog article I wrote introducing the package. [https://www.arundo.com/arundo_tech_blog/adtk-open-source- tim...](https://www.arundo.com/arundo_tech_blog/adtk-open-source-time-series- anomaly-detection-in-python)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome, thanks for sharing. It feels like this could be useful for detecting data quality issues in things like daily ETL, I'll have to give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks. This is really comprehensive and well documented.</comment>


A wave of experiments is probing the root of quantum weirdness - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585 <comment><USER3> I'm going to try to explain this in programming terms :)

There's a longstanding interpretation that the wave-particle duality is actually caused by (e.g. electrons) being particles riding invisible waves. This interpretation (Bohmian mechanics) has been largely ignored as "valid but uninteresting."

A key reason why this isn't historically that appealing is that the state of the "invisible waves" in the neighborhood of a single particle is mathematically dependent on the instantaneous state of _every other particle in the universe._

If you assume the universe is a simulation, then the programmer would be a freshman computer science student who unnecessarily made stepping forward in time quadratic!

The oil-droplet experiments are an accidental existence proof that you can get behavior similar to quantum behavior in particle+wave systems without the quadratic global update rule.

Is it enough? There's still tons of open questions, and possibly (likely) yet another dead end.

<comment><USER4> where is the contradiction here?

my understanding of 'natural' physics is as a relation between particle(s) and every other particle in the universe

and our physics calculations trying to understand and predict those natural events wave away those relations valued insignificant to the desired probability threshold?

contrived but applicable example, "assume you are on a frictionless plane with zero wind resistance"

or in one of the most amazing results of applied physics in recent news :

"Fred Jansen, Rosetta's mission manager at ESA, said officials predicted a 70 to 75 percent probability of a successful landing by Philae before the mission's launch in 2004. But that number assumed the comet was a rounded body, not the oddly-shaped world found by Rosetta."

<comment><USER5> > my understanding of 'natural' physics is as a relation between particle(s) > and every other particle in the universe

The key word in the parent comment is _instantaneous._ This means that pilot- wave theory is not compatible with relativity, if I understand correctly.

<comment><USER6> Is it instantaneous or is it the known or observable state propagated at the speed of light?

Perhaps unrelated, but they have already shown that entangled particles propagate state at the speed of light. So we probably wont have any Ender's game ansible communication devices any time soon.

<comment><USER5> AFAIUI, under pilot-wave theory it's instantaneous. It's how the theory gets round Bell's Theorem, which only forbids _local_ hidden variables.

(Again, I am an interested layman, not a scientist, so this comment may be nonsense.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a good resource out there for laymen to explain "quantum stuff" in a meaningful way?

When I read articles that are using words like "spooky" and "weird" as terms of art, and using Schrödinger's cat as a way to clarify a topic, I get nothing out of it. And I'd like to be able to explain to my mom what this stuff is.

<comment><USER8> "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" by Richard Feynman: [http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light- Matter/dp/069...](http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light- Matter/dp/0691024170)

I read this book in high-school and learned about as much as I did in 4 undergrad physics courses about quantum mechanics. There's no mathematics in this book, so it doesn't teach you how to calculate anything (for this, a physics degree helps), but the principles are presented very nicely.

<comment><USER9> I second that and after if you are keen it can be good to look at the Feynman Lectures vol III, Chapter 5 where he talks about spin. He deliberately leaves spin out of QED to keep things simple. Also if curious there's the Feynman lectures on Gravitation where he tries to figure out quantum gravity and fails like everyone else. One thing I like about Feynman is his talks are based on experiments - if you fire electrons at two slits this happens (QED) or if you send them past a magnet that happens (Ch 5). This is in contrast to most popular science books which go on about spooky cats or most academic treatments which launch into a bunch of abstract maths without looking that much at what's going on physically. I find it much easier to get my head around the real experiment approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the role of the observer? What is the observer? Why does observation cause the wave function to collapse?

<comment><USER11> What if we don't have a human observe? What if all data is only ever interpreted by canines and bovines (dogs and cows)? Will the wave function still collapse?

How would you isolate an experiment from the potentially-wave-function- collapsing influence of human consciousness, and yet still produce a usable contribution to science?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure why this was down voted - it's a perfectly valid question.

There are serious philosophical issues with the _idea_ of an observer, conscious or otherwise, as a useful concept.

Entanglement isn't really the issue, because it doesn't solve the problem. What does it mean to be entangled with a complex state in a state of some form of consciousness?

How much consciousness is needed to make a difference? Why should adult human consciousness be the benchmark, and not semi-consciousness, or distraction, or unconsciousness, or toddler-level pre-verbal awareness, or jellyfish consciousness, or LSD-induced hallucination?

If consciousness is necessary, why doesn't reality stop working when we fall asleep? Why do plants live in a consistent physical reality even though they don't know what a Hamiltonian is?

If physics had code smells, this idea of consciousness might not pass the sniff test.

Of course it's possible it's still the right answer. But if it is, it's interesting there's _no useful explanation of anything_ in the concept yet. Nor is there any formalism to support it. (Obviously there's a formalism for wave function collapse. But so far as I know, there's nothing in the math that says "And these variables are where the observer works his/her/its magic.")

Really it's just something that might be true, maybe, because we have no idea what's going on and it's as good a guess as any other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it may ultimately turn out that the best explanation for quantum mechanics is simply the set of postulates we already have, _minus_ the Born rule. It's well known that a quantum system continues to evolve unitarily (deterministically) via the propagation operator _regardless_ of whether any subsystems have collapsed. How can you have a discontinuous subsystem within a larger continuous system? You can't.

The explanation for the _appearance_ of collapse lies in the phenomenon of decoherence, which basically says that subsystems tend to quickly evolve into something resembling an eigenstate. This evolution must necessarily occur on an incredibly short timescale. It might be possible to design an experiment that would test the assumption that collapse is instantaneous.

I think the best definition of "collapse" is that it is the moment in time in which a particular system can no longer be described (to good approximation) as the direct product of two subsystems (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_state](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_state)). The concept of a "good approximation" is of course subjective, but it can always be objectively metricized (totally made that word up) by using some kind of error term.

Epigrammatically, collapse is not so much a physical process as it is a characterization of the _capability_ to represent a quantum state in a specific mathematical form.

(Of course, this doesn't preclude you from categorizing physical processes as "collapse events"; it just means that collapse isn't a fundamental phenomenon so much as it is an emergent one. Kind of like quasiparticles.)

So what about the randomness? I think it's better to refer to it as unpredictability. The difference is subtle but crucial. True randomness (assuming it exists) is the result of absolute indeterminism. On the other hand, if eigenstate selection is merely "unpredictable", then that implies collapse _is_ in fact a deterministic process (specifically e^(-iHt) applied to Ψ over some time interval that we've decided to call a "measurement"); however, we're unable to extract enough information from the environment to make exact predictions because _we ourselves_ constitute the required missing information. In other words, the information necessary for absolute predictive capability is trapped in the subsystem constituting the measuring environment, and it becomes lost when that subsystem becomes entangled with the subsystem being measured. And there's not really any way to prevent that from occurring, because entanglement _must_ occur in order to learn anything about a system.

This even applies classically. The only difference is that classical entanglement occurs between localized physical boundaries instead of between subspace boundaries in an abstract Hilbert space.

To somewhat reify this, assume (for the sake of argument) that a classical description of physics is enough to describe a human. Then perform a large MD simulation of all the atoms inside a physics lab, including those of a physicist. The evolution of this simulated system is provably deterministic. Yet the physicist _appears_ to have free will, and it _appears_ like he is deciding which measurements to perform on his environment. But he's just an arbitrary collection of atoms that we've labeled "human", and he obeys the same time-transformation rules that the unlabeled atoms in the system obey. Mathematically, it's simply impossible for him to predict everything that occurs within the virtual system -- not because of indeterminism -- but because he isn't so much "choosing" what to measure as he is "appearing to choose". There's a limit to the amount of information any system can obtain about itself (well, maybe there's some fractals that are exceptions, but generally speaking, it holds true.)

That said, experiment is always the ultimate arbitrator of truth, and I wonder if there might yet be some clever way to tell whether our universe is simply unpredictable instead of random, despite the possibility that both potential mechanisms might impose the same limits on predictive capability (in fact, Colbeck and Renner recently proved that QM is _already_ maximally predictive, independent of whatever underlying mechanism governs eigenstate selection -- see [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n8/abs/ncomms1416.ht...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n8/abs/ncomms1416.html))

<comment><USER14> Great analysis. Is there even a theory of what causes randomness? Where does it come from? Why should we believe it is discrete from "unpredictability?" Even in random number generators, the game is about pulling from widely unpredictable sources to generate entropy - the word "random" should maybe be a misnomer. I've never believed in anything besides unpredictability in various scopes of systems. By scopes of systems, I mean, in some contexts of analysis it makes sense to deem a system temporarily closed to analyze certain parts of it. For example, the earth is not a closed system, but for some discussions and analysis it makes sense to simply treat it like one.

I don't know why it is so hard for this description - or paradigm - <USER2> proliferate to the masses and various pop writers. Writers so often are tying human consciousness to QM experimentation as if it were something special. The fact of the matter is: in each QM experiment the only things really interacting with the experiment are the atoms of the measurement apparatuses, sensors, and whatnot. In the case of the double slit experiment, we could have them "interpreted" automatically - and say, kill a cat if an interference pattern is created and not kill it if one is not made. Making the discussion about consciousness is a distraction from the core issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The exploration of what the wavefunction "means" in terms of the world around us has been one of the more interesting things to watch. When I took quantum physics in school (under the generic heading "Modern Physics") psi and quantum mechanics was very much simply a mathematical treatment of things rather, unlike thermodynamics which was actually visible and "real". Between the teleporation work and recent wavefunction work it seems like a lot more layers of the universe are being revealed.

</comment><comment><USER16> One question I have: if a pilot wave description of quantum mechanics was in fact the "right" one, would quantum computers be impossible? It's confusing because many articles claim that the various interpretations of QM yield the same predictions, and yet the irreducible randomness of the Copenhagen interpretation seems to be a prerequisite for quantum computing.

<comment><USER17> See my comment below. Anderson and Brady seem to think that quantum computing is impossible. It reduces to analog computing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good article on the original PBR paper: [http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state- be-i...](http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be- interpreted-statistically/)

</comment><comment><USER19> My own layman theory on this is that time has a wave like nature to it, not the particles. The idea is to rewrite the wave equation solving for time using the minkowski metric (space and time are related through relativity).

The results should be the same, but it is a different interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER20> Someone more knowledgeable about solitons can chime in on this...

A friend of mine modeled soliton interactions. When one soliton passes through another, information can be exchanged such that colliding solitons contain bits of each other when they move apart. No matter how far apart these solitons get, the soliton "children" still "chat" with their "parents". One soliton can contain multiple elements of other solitons, all of them interacting at a distance. Their behavior can mimic "spooky action at a distance". Also, solitons can have wave like behavior or particle like behavior depending on how they are observed.

</comment><comment><USER21> So we still have little progress in the interpretation problem, but the planned experiments are going to shed light?

</comment><comment><USER22> One of those posts where I read the comments and I realise how dumb I really am.

</comment><comment><USER23> Practical quantum field experience -> Meditation, no cat needed.

</comment><comment><USER17> See [http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4356](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4356), a paper by Ross Anderson and Robert Brady. They've since expanded the theory greatly, with other papers on arxiv.

Also, check out this fascinating debate about these matters on Scott Aaronson's blog. Link is [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1255](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1255)

Brady and Anderson have many posts in this debate, and IMHO, wind up winning.

It's looking more and more like physics took a wrong turn with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

<comment><USER24> I am biased as a Scott A. fan and as somebody who knows essentially nothing about QM. However I see no way to conclude that Anderson and Brady even know what they're talking about, much less that they win the debate on the linked Scott Aaronson page. I just read through it again to confirm my recollection (skipping the Motl and Sidles posts fwiw).

<comment><USER17> The main reason I felt Scott A. (and company) lost the debate is because he could not point to a single experiment that actually uses qubits to do a calculation above a very small threshold. There is much written about experiments that seem to show entanglement of multi qubit systems, but none of them actually do any calculations with the qubits.

Brady and Anderson's point is that it's not a qubit until you can calculate with it. And their theory suggests it will get exponentially harder for each qubit above 4 (I think), which throws out all of the interesting quantum algorithms.

I also felt Brady and Anderson silenced every objection. After one or more of their rebuttals, they were no longer challenged. The most recent post about Feynman is also interesting.

In any event, it is a fascinating blog post.</comment></comment></comment>